


Trinity

by amagicbeyond



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-03
Updated: 2014-07-25
Packaged: 2018-02-07 08:12:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1891713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amagicbeyond/pseuds/amagicbeyond
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angel, human, demon. Scattered and farther from a team than they have ever been, Cas, Sam, and Dean must find a way to come together to fix the world and find themselves - and each other - again. Post-9x23.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Prologue_

 

Crowley stands under the light of the clouded moon and watches his creation.

He’s still, and posed, but he’s humming with life. His head turns, and in his profile Crowley sees curiosity, caution, excitement, as dark eyes dart from tree to tree, from moon to stars, seeing,  _feeling_ , the blessed earth in a whole new light.

Black eyes, Crowley reminds himself, and revels in the thrill.

“Didn’t I tell you, Dean?” he says, to remind this beautiful, freshly minted demon that he’s here, to remind him who he owes this to. “A new kind of life. And isn’t it…”

Faster than Crowley could have guessed, faster than any other demon he knew, Dean is in front of him, close to him, looming with uncalculated, almost feral interest. His head tilts, and Crowley holds his ground. “… invigorating?”

Dean looks at him, unblinking, black eyes masking any expression. Crowley wonders how much he remembers of his old life, how much he remembers of the history they share. Of the loathing. Of reluctant friendship forged, carefully cultivated. Dean exhales from his nose, a quick push of air that reveals nothing of his thoughts, and walks away. Crowley realizes he’s been holding his own breath.

For Dean Winchester is no ordinary demon, shaped in the mold of the father, carved with a butcher’s knife, broken and twisted and pliant. Dean Winchester bore the Mark of Cain.

Dean Winchester would have to be tamed.

 

_Chapter One_

 

How many times must a brother grieve for a brother?

How many times must he sit with this filmy glass, with this too-light bottle, with these dried-up tears, with this dull, rolling pain, deep within his belly?

Sam sits on the floor, inhaling the death-sweet scent of a summoning spell, and knows that Crowley isn’t coming. His anger comes in bursts, smashing mirrors and turning over cabinets, and the pieces of it are scattered all around him. He is tired now, and he longs for sleep, but sleep would not be fair when his brother lies dead in his bedroom above.

Dean’s voice echoes, and Sam can’t make it stop.

_It’s better this way_.

No, this can’t be _better_.

_The Mark – it’s making me into something I don’t want to be._

Sam had been so angry at him. He had been right to be angry, Dean had been so unapologetically wrong, so uncomprehending of what he had done to Sam, what he had truly done when he took away Sam’s right to choose. But Sam couldn’t find that anger now. Sadness, instead, profound sadness and the knowledge that if he hadn’t been so angry, if Dean hadn’t been driven into Crowley’s poisoned grasp–

This is _not_ my fault.

Sam’s anger renews itself.

This is _Crowley’s fault._

“And you’re going to pay, _do you hear me_?” Sam shouts, his voice already hoarse.

Crowley, the disease they should have eradicated years ago. The demon they let walk away too many times. The one they let get too close. He was the only one they should have been afraid of.

“Dean-”

It’s a plea, and Sam’s voice breaks making it. He feels fresh tears, and he takes a swig from the bottle.

Where is Dean now?

Sam’s thoughts turn to Heaven, and for the first time, to Cas.

_Cas_...

Cas could find him, if Dean is in Heaven. Cas could bring him back.

Sam knows that Dean is not in Heaven.

_Cas doesn’t know yet, he doesn’t know that Dean is –_

Cas is going to break.

“Cas,” Sam says aloud. Slowly, unsteadily, he pushes to his feet, as if that could get him a little closer to Heaven. “Cas, it’s me, it’s Sam-”

He can’t tell him in a prayer.

“Cas, I – we need you here.”

Sam wishes desperately that prayers weren’t one-way calls, that Cas still had his wings, that he’d arrive in a whirl of feathers and touch his fingers to Dean’s forehead and bring him back, bring him _back_ , and make everything better. “Please – if you can – we’re at the bunker. I’m at the bunker.”

 Sam’s a mess. Cas could be trapped in Heaven, Cas could be facing down Metatron, Cas could be driving down the interstate in his stupid pimp car Dean secretly found endearing.

Cas is going to know anyway. It’s Dean who does the praying.

“Please.”

Sam droops, leaning against the sweating stone wall, looking at a patch of dried-up vomit that isn’t his. Crowley isn’t coming.

Sam has a sudden need to see his brother again. He should keep vigil. He should build a pyre. He stumbles through checkered halls, and almost smiles when he thinks of how Dean would make fun of him for not being able to hold his liquor like a real man should. The thought of a smile feels like a punch in the gut.

It takes him a moment, when he arrives in the doorway, to realize that the bed is empty.

Dean is gone.

 

***

 

Cas is surrounded by angels, and he wants nothing more than to be alone.

Sam’s broken voice echoes in his head, and everything hurts. He is trying so hard to protect Cas from the truth, but the truth is written in every word he says.

“Please.”                                                                                                                           

For a moment, barely a breath, Cas ponders staying, pretending he can’t hear Sam’s plea, cutting the last Winchester out of his life so he can forget feelings, forget being human, forget this desperate denial and acceptance and despair winding around his insides, forget the man he gave everything for, forget his eyes, forget his smile, forget his name.

_Dean Winchester_.

He hears it in Metatron’s slimy, satisfied voice, as he would hear it forevermore.

_He’s dead, too._

His fingers ache for the hilt of an angel blade, any angel blade but the one Metatron waved gleefully in his face, the one stained red and brown with the blood of the person Cas held dearest in all the world.

There was no point in denying it now.

He would go. He would leave Metatron to the angels scorned and he would go to Sam, he would look upon Dean’s broken body and know he was powerless. He would go because Sam needed him to. He would go so Sam wouldn’t have to be alone.

Cas wanted so much to be alone.

“Castiel!”

Hannah was looking at him expectantly, she who had handed him an angel blade and told him to punish the one man that he could never, she who had held another blade to the throat of a sister, trying to help him save the very same man. He hadn’t been listening.

“I know you’re...” Hannah was choosing her words carefully, was Castiel’s pain that clear to see? But angels were not made for empathy. “Upset. But with Metatron in chains, it won’t be long before our brothers and sisters are fighting among themselves again. We need a leader we can rally behind. Castiel, you-”

“I will _not_ ,” Castiel growls, and he is as surprised as she is at the anger in his voice. He swallows, and hurts, and does his best to speak calmly. “How many times do I have to say it?”

“Then name a replacement,” she says. The suggestion comes without hesitation. She may have already made it, Cas can’t be sure. “The angels look to you. Your choice will carry weight. It might save us all.”

Cas frowns, and the tactician in him knows she speaks the truth. “Who do I name? You?”

There may have been a bitterness there, but he didn’t mean for her to hear it. Hannah presses her lips together.

“If you ask me to,” she says. “I will try.”

Cas looks at her, sees her grace, pure and untarnished, and her intentions, better than most. But Cas has grown wary of power, and what he has seen it do to better angels than him.

“A council,” he says. “A council of... seven, voted upon by the angels. Choose your own leaders. Seven to share the power. Seven to consider all decisions. I will not put my name on the ballot.”

He turns his back, but her voice is filled with confusion.

“A vote?”

“It’s called democracy,” he tells the wall. “It’s a human concept.”

It’s a moment again before she speaks.

“We will try,” she says again, with determination. “But then – what next?”

Cas turns. “Whatever you want,” he says. “You have Heaven open to you once again.”

“A pathway to Heaven, yes,” she says. “But the spell has not been reversed. We angels are still without wings.”

“Perhaps that is for the best,” Castiel says softly. She hears him.

“And what of the souls? Those waiting in the veil for entrance to Heaven?”

This gives Cas pause.

“We must find a way to open the gates. For humanity – isn’t that your creed?”

_What does he want?_

_I’m afraid – humanity._

Gadreel had been wrong. It was never humanity that Metatron was after.

_You drape yourself in the flag of heaven..._

“I have no creed,” Castiel tells her, and walks away.

 

***

 

Sam has torn the bunker apart. He has checked every room. He’s rifled through the Impala. He keeps going back to Dean’s room, to stare at the empty bed, to collapse in Dean’s desk chair, to try to understand. He buries his face in his hands, and then screams at the ceiling.

_“CROWLEY!”_

“No need to shout.”

Sam is on his feet and reaching for the nearest weapon, but Crowley raises a hand, and he feels himself go entirely still, a terrifying game of statues gone horribly wrong. No Men of Letters handcuffs, no demon traps here. He’s entirely vulnerable. He roars, a wordless, angry rage.

“Now, now, Moose,” Crowley says, strolling closer, examining the artifacts of Dean’s life with mild interest. “You did summon me, did you not?”

“ _Where is he?_ ”

“Who?” Crowley pauses. “Oh, your sarcastic brat of a brother, of course. Well, Sam, I thought you’d be happy. You did summon me so that you could make a deal, didn’t you? Bring Squirrel back to life? Turns out I did it for free. Must be getting soft.”

Hope tastes bitter on Sam’s tongue. “Dean’s – alive?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Crowley says.

“What does that mean?” He spits it, he rages it. “Talk faster.”

“Well,” Crowley picks up the faded picture Dean kept of their mother, threads it through his fingers, considers. If Sam could move, he would kill him. “You know that old Mark of Cain did quite a number on him. Hung on to his soul, that was handy. Kept it from going anywhere before I could get to him.”

“Crowley,” Sam says. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Crowley says innocently. “Dean was already on this journey all on his very own. I just... gave him a little push.”

“Where is he?” Sam says, heaving, pushing at the forces holding him in place.

Now Crowley looks up, and there is a satisfaction in his gaze that frightens Sam. “He’s... with me.”

“What do you _mean_?”

“I mean,” Crowley says slowly. “He’s... with... me.”

Sam finds he can move, and even as he lunges, the King of Hell is gone.

 

***

 

Metatron is still smiling, and Cas has never felt hatred like this.

He didn’t know it was possible, to find new emotions after poverty and hunger and desperation, after comfort and happiness and friendship, after conflict, devastation, hollowness. But here he stands, with only the cold bars of Heaven and whatever might be left of his convictions keeping him from wringing Metatron’s neck with his bare, borrowed hands.

Some part of Cas might have once believed that left here long enough, Metatron could find his own redemption, as Gadreel had. There is no part of him left that believes that.

“What could you possibly have to smile about?” he asks, without wanting to know the answer.

Metatron titters, an obscene little giggle, and then makes a visible effort to look serious. “Someday, Castiel,” he says, that same smile pulling at his lips. “Someday you will know.”

_Cas!_

Sam’s voice, sudden, and urgent, carrying a whole new kind of desperation. Cas takes a step back in surprise.

_Cas, you need to get here NOW!_

“Angel radio?” Metatron says. “They must be playing your song.”

Cas doesn’t give him the satisfaction of a response.

He goes.


	2. Chapter 2

The newborn demon takes in his surroundings.

It’s a cloudy night, but to the demon it seems as bright as if it were a full moon, light filtering silkily through leaves to the ground below, tracing patterns, movement dancing all around him and the world is alive.

Alive, _alive_ , he is alive, and he knows, somehow, he shouldn’t be. His right arms pulses, but it’s not pain, it’s energy, and he gazes down at the Mark, quiet and glowing and ancient against his skin. He feels strong. He feels like he could do anything.

He looks at the pile of dead rodents at his feet, at the blood still pulsing from the neck of a young, dead deer. He can.

There’s more than this, though. He seeks out the man who comes and goes, who watches him, the man he knows, somehow, from another life, another time. The watcher flinches when the demon moves next to him, but only slightly. His face is a mask.

“Where am I?” the demon growls, his words guttural, his voice raw.

“Where are you?” The watcher sounds surprised. “I don’t know, the woods in the middle of bumbling nowhere? You brought us here.” He licks a finger, sticks it up in the air. “Feels like Maine to me.”

 _I brought us here._ He doesn’t remember doing it. He doesn’t remember anything before . . . here.

The demon feels the earth, the vibration of billions of feet walking upon it. “People. I want to go where there are people.” He can smell them, he can taste their ignorance, their simple lives, their blissful nothingness, and he wants to understand how they could be so placid. He wants to kill some just for fun. He rubs the Mark on his arm.

The watcher’s eyebrows raise, and he smiles, and it makes the demon angry. “Then what’s stopping you?”

The demon glares, and turns away. “Who are you?”

“I think the question you’re really asking is, ‘who am I?’”

The demon waits, breathes, considers, feels, before he speaks again. “You called me Dean.”

“That was your name.”

“Was?”

“It doesn’t have to be, anymore. That’s one of the little perks about being granted a second life. You get to forge yourself a new name.”

“Dean...” the demon says, testing out the shape of the word. And then, “Winchester.”

The watcher’s head moves back, his chin up, incrementally. “Yes.”

The demon once called Dean Winchester finds a memory, a distant one, a voice. _Dean Winchester is saved._

“Who was Dean Winchester?”

The watcher considers his answer. “He was... human.”

“And who am I?”

***

Scenarios have played themselves out in Cas’ head, a thousand scenarios set against the cloudy night, his flickering headlights the only light for miles. He has travelled from hope to despair to worry and hope again, with silence from Sam, and no answer when he tries to call.

_Cas, you need to get here NOW!_

That was not the prayer of a brother in grief.

A shining sign, a beacon, reads Lebanon. Cas can’t make his damned car go any faster.

_Dean, where are you?_

The learned angel in him knows that one who bears the Mark of Cain does not go to heaven when he dies. Dean was not pacing the veil, waiting for a Reaper who might never come, waiting for peace, reward.

The human in Cas will not think of the other option.

He knows that Metatron did not lie to him, he knew it when he saw Dean’s blood on the blade, he knew it when he thought of his arms locked around Dean’s chest, using all of his angel strength to hold him back from Gadreel, snarling and spitting and barely himself. He knew that Dean would not hesitate to die in this fight.

_The last time I saw him, I turned my back and walked away._

He hadn’t said a word. They’d locked Dean in a dungeon, like an animal, like one of the demons they hunted, and left him there to die.

_If I had stayed with him... if I had listened..._

Dean had been crying out for help as loudly as he could. They had failed him.

The road grows blurry, and tears fall, freely, dry sobs tearing through Cas’ chest. He gasps for air, tries to steady himself, fails. He pulls over, gripping the steering wheel as hard as he can. Seeking purchase. He has never felt this, this physical pain of feeling, this human burden to bear. It is a long time before he can draw even breath, before he can blow his nose on his sleeve, before he can take the wheel again.

He does not know what he will find when he reaches Sam, and he is afraid.

***

The demon once known as Dean Winchester is staring at a house, and he doesn’t know why.

It appears unassuming, uninteresting, no different than any other on the block, a simple family home. But he can sense its history, its layers peeling back toward smoke and flame and blood, and there is a reason he came here.

“What is this place?” he asks the man who watches him.

The watcher is quiet for a moment. “Lawrence, Kansas,” he says. “This is where Dean Winchester began.”

Then he should feel a connection. Some part of him knows this, but nothing comes, no recognition, no fondness, no fear.

But he hears a voice.

_Take your brother outside as fast as you can - don't look back._

His cheek twitches.

_Now, Dean! Go!_

“I had a brother,” he says.

“Dean Winchester had a brother,” his companion replies.

A name comes to him. “Sam,” he says. “Sammy.”

The watcher says nothing.

The demon looks at the house, feels the sudden, thirsty urge to hurt, to kill. He wonders who lives there now.

“But I failed him,” he says, his fists balled, restraining himself but only just. He doesn't know how, but he knows this to the core. “Dean Winchester failed.”

“Yes,” his watcher says.

***

When he finally stands before the bunker, Cas has steadied himself, wiped the tear tracks from his cheeks. He waits for Sam to open the door, and each moment of stillness grows louder and louder.

“Cas.”

Cas falls into his embrace, so glad that he has this friend, Sam Winchester, who has forgiven him so much.

Sam’s grip is tight, and when he finally steps back, his face is lost.

“Tell me what’s happened.”

Sam turns and leads him into the bowels of the bunker, the Winchesters’ wayward home.

“Cas, it's Dean. He-”

“I know.” Cas doesn’t want to hear the words again. Sam stops and looks at him. “Metatron told me.”

Sam lets out a bitter, bitter laugh. “Of course he did.” Cas waits, and they keep walking, and Sam continues. “I would have gone with him. I should have been there. But Dean-”

“Tried to protect you.” It’s what Dean always did.

“I saw it happen.” Sam says. “I got there just in time to watch Metatron-”

He falls silent.

“I failed him too, Sam,” Cas says, trying to keep his voice steady. “I didn’t get to the tablet in time.”

“But you got to it,” Sam says. “We felt it- I tried-”

“Metatron still has his wings,” Cas says. “But he’s locked in Heaven’s cell now. We’ve got him.”

It’s hardly a comfort.

“Sam, it’s not your fault.”

“And it’s not yours,” Sam says quickly. They are standing in front of Dean’s bedroom. “But Cas, there’s more.”

Cas waits.

***

He’s in a junkyard in South Dakota, and the blood of his last victim has followed him there. He looks at his hands, sticky with it.

“Let me help,” his watcher says.

The demon is wary, but the other man only waves a hand over his own, and the dark and red is gone.

“You’re like me,” the demon says.

“I am,” says the other. “I am a demon like you.”

 _A demon._ The word snakes into his ears, catches. He turns away.

“I know this place.”

There are flashes of images, and scents, and sounds. Motor oil and licorice. Gunpowder, a wailing scream. Whiskey. Sammy, laughing. A pair of confused blue eyes. And a man, an old man, grumpy and grumbling and underneath that, smiling.

He grips his arm, tightly.

There's only blackened ashes of what must have been a house. Rusted trucks long forgotten. There are no people here anymore.

He can't stay here. He can't stay here. There’s only death and deeds gone wrong. He's going to choke on it.

_I failed them, I failed them, I failed._

***

Cas sits on the edge of Dean’s bed, and Sam is struck again by the profound sadness he wears. Crowley’s words hiss in his ears: _he’s... with... me..._

“The Mark,” says Cas.

He’s been silent a long time, since Sam told him about Crowley’s visit, about Dean’s missing body. He’s about to say everything Sam suspects, everything Sam fears, and Sam isn’t sure if he’s ready to face it.

Cas turns to look at Dean’s pillow, at the place where he lay, at the rusty bloodstains left on the blankets. “Crowley said that he’d only ‘helped’ Dean along his journey. It’s the Mark, it did something to him, it-”

He looks up at Sam. “You know what it did, Sam.”

_It’s making me into something I don’t want to be._

“A demon,” says Sam. “It’s made him into a demon.”

“Yes,” says Cas. “Yes, I think so.”

“Did you know this would-”

“No,” says Cas. “Much of Cain’s story is a mystery to the angels. But to Crowley-”

His eyes are red, and sitting there, limbs folded, weariness on his face, he’s never looked more human.

“So,” Sam says. “A demon.”

He sits in the desk chair. A heavy silence falls between them.

“Well,” Sam says, finally. “At least we know there’s a cure.”

***

The two demons stand shoulder to shoulder in a graveyard that's long overgrown.

“Charming,” says one.

“This is where I saved the world,” says the other. He says it calmly, detached. He's breathing easier now, this place calms him. He remembers pain, he remembers fear, but now he only feels numb.

“Some might say this is where you damned it.”

The demon frowns, but the idea doesn't really trouble him. “Where do I go from here?”

“Well,” says his companion. “We could continue on the Ghost of Christmas Past tour of Dean Winchester's life.”

The demon looks over, annoyed.

“Or, we could start your new one,” he says. When the new-made demon does not reply, he continues. “Yes, you lived a human life. But Dean Winchester – Dean Winchester is dead. The things he did, the people he knew – they are no longer your concern. The life of a demon – now.” He chuckles, and raises his hand, closing it around the stem of a flower that wasn't there a moment ago. “You've haven't lived, until you've seen what you can do as a demon. You won’t be a failure with me.”

He offers the flower to the demon, who stares at it. It's red, it's living, it's impossible.

It's beautiful.

“The earth is a remarkable place,” says the other, softly. “We demons only want to be a part of it.”

The demon takes the flower, turns it between his fingers.

“Can you teach me?”

“Everything,” his companion says. “My child, I will teach you everything.”

***

Cas watches as Sam readies the spell, hopes against hope it will work, hopes that it won’t, fears what Dean, their Dean, has become. Has been molded into. He remembers a threat, from his own lips, made not so very long ago. _When you betray us, I will be the one to carve out your heart._

 _I will, Crowley_ , he vows. _You have done too much._

His heart aches.

“There,” Sam says. “It’s ready.” He surveys his handiwork. “You think it’ll work?”

Cas only looks. He doesn’t know the answer.

Sam stands, claps a hand on his shoulder. Sam is being strong for him, and it’s wrong, it should be the other way around, but Cas can only sit there and let him, sorrow and fear and hurt seeping from his very bones. He does not know how humans can be so strong. He is lost.

“Here goes, then.”

Sam lights a match, tosses it. The stinging scent of herbs and dead things almost brings Cas to his knees.

They wait.


	3. Chapter 3

The demon examines the flower's red petals, perfect, pristine, delicate, ordered. He tries to imagine pulling it from dust, crafting it from imagination, from thought. He feels power bursting from his fingertips and he wants to master it.

“My name is Crowley,” his teacher says. “I chose that name after many years of becoming what I am, when I knew I would never again be the man I was. You can take your time to decide what yours will be.”

“So I am nameless?”

“Only as long as you want to be.”

The demon nods. It’s fitting. He feels nameless, adrift, detached from reality and plunged into a new one where flowers can bloom from fingertips and travel can occur at whim of thought.

They stand in an abandoned factory. Spray paint covers the walls. Blood coats the floor. He feels the need to kill rising in him again.

“This is where Dean Winchester died,” he says.

And then he disappears.

***

All at once Dean is there, alive, breathing, upright, and it's all Sam can do to keep from crying out and rushing to him. Cas releases an exhalation beside him, almost like a strangled sob.

But Dean is half-crouched, his head darting from side to side, and when he looks up at them, everything Sam knew but didn't want to believe becomes real.

“Dean,” he breathes.

Dean rises to full height, wary, defensive, unfamiliar. His eyes-

His eyes are black.

Sam swallows, hard. Cas is frozen in place beside him, and Sam knows he will have to take the lead. “Dean, do you know where you are? Do you know... who I am?”

It's hard to tell, but Dean's eyes dart toward the ceiling, the devil's trap painted there, then back to Sam.

“Sammy.”

Relief is a cool trickle down his chest. Dean's voice is the same, rougher, maybe, but it's him.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah that's right, Dean, it's me.”

“My name is not Dean Winchester.”

Sam frowns, and then a thought occurs to him, one that he can't decide if it is better or worse. “Are you... a different demon? Are you possessing my brother?”

Dean frowns, but it is Cas who speaks.

“There is no other demon here,” he says, and he sounds as if only now, for the first time, he is truly feeling the billions and billions of years he has lived. “There is only Dean.”

Hope and fear are neutralized, and Sam wonders just what Cas is seeing – what true face, what nightmare - when he looks at Sam’s brother. The thought makes him woozy and he pushes it down.

Dean has noticed Cas for the first time. He goes very still.

“I know you,” he says.

Cas looks back at him, silently. There are tears in his eyes.

Dean seems more afraid now, more confused. “Where have you taken me?” he demands. “Why have you brought me here?”

“Dean, we- we brought you here to help you,” says Sam.

“Help me?”

“To cure you,” he says, coming forward, coming closer to the edge of the trap. “We can save you, Dean, we can make you yourself again. We can fix this.”

Cas looks up at Sam, and suddenly Sam knows he's said all the wrong things.

“It's not broken,” Dean whispers, his eyes on Cas. He whirls on Sam.

“You want to make me Dean Winchester again!”

Sam steps back as Dean advances. “I-”

Dean hits the edge of the devil's trap and stops short. He growls and slams his palms against the air in front of him.

“Dean-”

“Dean Winchester was a failure,” his brother snarls. “He failed at everything he ever did. He failed in his final mission. He ruined everything he touched. So many lives... even yours.”

“Dean-” Sam tries. “No-”

Dean throws his shoulder against the invisible barrier. “Dean Winchester was a human. He was weak.”

“Just listen-”

“And now,” Dean says, stepping back, breathing heavily. “Now I am anything but weak. The earth is mine.”

And Sam feels the room begin to shake.

He moves toward his brother, but Cas cries out his name and pulls him back. Bottles smash and plaster falls from the ceiling where Sam had been standing, and Dean Winchester smiles, his thumb pressed against the Mark on his arm.

The devil's trap is broken. Dean strides forward.

“You want to take this away from me?”

Sam is afraid to speak. It's Cas who does, in a broken voice.

“Dean,” he says. “This isn't you.”

For a moment, Dean pauses, black eyes meeting blue. But then the grin returns, and he steps back, spreading his arms wide. “This? This is all me, baby.”

And then he's gone.

***

Cas sits at a long, polished table in the Bunker’s great room and looks at the empty chair opposite him. He thinks of Dean’s easy answer to his complicated question, the last time they sat here together.

_You really believe we three will be enough?_

_We always have been._

Sam is in his room. He hasn’t said anything since the encounter with Dean, and Cas is sitting at this table because he doesn’t have a room to go to.

When he closes his eyes he sees the face beyond freckles and laugh lines, and it’s horrifying and Hell-tainted and _wrong_.

He had frozen, when he’d seen Dean and the new face he wore, and he had let Sam take the lead because it was all he could do. He should have known, given Sam’s state, given Sam’s desperation, that it was a mistake. But had he fared any better?

_This isn’t you._

Words he’d heard from Dean’s own, desperate voice, kneeling in front of him, hand outstretched, words that had brought him back to himself when it should have been impossible. _We’re family. We need you. I need you._ He’d echoed their beginning, a poor, pale attempt, and for a moment’s breath he’d thought Dean had remembered.

But he couldn’t get the rest out, and the brief glimpse of _Dean_ behind black eyes had turned to smirking demon, and the wisp of hope that had grown in his chest withered all at once.

He thought of what Dean had said, about being a failure, and he’s so _angry_. Dean had always been so blind, so unwilling to see the good in himself, the purity of soul he possessed, unlike any other Cas had ever seen. And now that blindness has manifested itself in _this_ , this twisted perversion of the truth. The Righteous Man made demon, newly born and powerful.

_I am anything but weak. The earth is mine._

How much of Dean is left?

Cas leans his elbows on the table and presses his fists to his face. He doesn’t know where to focus his anger. On Dean, on Crowley, on himself. He only knows that this is not the way it should be.

“I will not leave you to this fate,” he vows aloud, to the empty room and the empty chair.

Dean chose the Mark. He did not choose this. Cas will not let him become a thing for them to hunt.

_I know you._

It is this that gives him reason to keep going. Three words, and a searching, frightened look. _I know you_.

***

“The same forsaken forest in Maine?” the demon’s teacher says casually as he emerges from the bushes, brushing stray needles from his coat. “Good thing, I suppose, or else I might never have found you. Something important happen here?”

The demon doesn’t know why he returned to this place, there is nothing here but trees and rock and tiny, scurrying animals no longer worth his notice. He is shaken, and defensive. “I was summoned.”

“I gathered,” his teacher says.

“By him,” he says. “The Winchester brother. And-”

His teacher raises his eyebrows, turns his head, waiting. The demon sees damp blue eyes, a familiar coat. _I know you_ , he’d said, in a moment of surprise. _I know you, but how?_

His teacher is still waiting. The demon searches for the right word.

“An angel.”

His teacher lifts his chin. “Ah.” He does not seem surprised.

“They wanted to _fix_ me.”

His teacher looked at him thoughtfully. “Do you feel like you need to be fixed?”

The Mark hums to him, and saliva wells in his mouth.

“No.”

His teacher smiles, tenderly. “Good.” He turns, and raises a hand to snap his fingers.

The demon recognizes this gesture from some far-off dream. “Where are you going?”

His teacher turns. “Hell,” he says, casually. “I am, after all, its King.” He makes again as if to go, and then looks at the demon, twirling a flower in his fingertips. “Care to join me?”


End file.
